The 'Post-Jomtien' Phenomenon of
Indian Elementary Education

Article 45 under the Directive Principles of the Constitution of India reads
as follows:

'The state shall provide within a period of ten years, free and compulsory
education for all children up to the age of 14 years.' This goal was expected to
be reached by 1960.

The government's own data of 1990 shows that half the children and two-thirds
of the girls are out of school. Child labour is reliably estimated to be around
20 million.

It is against this backdrop that the Indian government policy shifts in
education of the last 15 years and the various forces influencing these shifts
need to be evaluated.

The National Policy on Education, 1986, heralds the beginning of a systematic
and progressive dilution of the commitment to the constitutional obligation in
ways hitherto not in evidence. The policy, for the first time, admitted to the
enormity of the task of universalization of elementary education, and the actual
number of children in school. In stark variation to Article 45, the policy
admits that it cannot reach out to all the children through the formal system
and proposes a parallel non-formal stream of education for those children who,
due to their economic condition cannot go to school. This decision, far from
mitigating the problem of child labour, actually condones it. The policy also
bifurcates elementary education into primary (5 years) and upper primary (3
years).

Since the World Conference of Education for All (EFA) held in Jomtien,
Thailand, in March 1990, these early indicators begin to take on a clearer
focus. During the post-Jomtien phase, the commitment to ensure eight years of
elementary education for all children has been reduced, for all practical
purposes, to five years of primary education, delinking it from the upper
primary stage to the extent that the term elementary is replaced with primary in
virtually all programme documents.

India's ratification of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) in
1992 re-affirms the commitment to make primary (not elementary) education
compulsory and available free for all.

The District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), funded by the World Bank and
a consortium of the European Community, restricted to five years of schooling,
is being promoted as a dominant strategy for universalization of elementary
education.

In 1995, five leading agencies of the United Nations (UNICEF, UNDP, ILO,
UNESCO and UNFPA) initiated a collabourative effort to provide programme support
in a coordinated manner, to the on-going efforts of the government of India
towards universalization of elementary education with $20 million aid. The
programme, titled UNSCOPE will operate specially in areas with low female
literacy, low female participation in school and high fertility areas.

In the wake of CRC, the National Literacy Mission has begun to include the
out-of-school children in the 9-14 age group in its programmes. As a result of
this, the state can claim fulfilment of educational responsibility of its
children, if a child attends 2 years of an adult literacy class, without ever
having stepped into school. This makes literacy, a dimension of education, a
national goal synonymous with education itself.

In 1990, the central government introduced the scheme of Minimum Levels of
Learning (MLL) in the primary school programme. Some of the features of MLL are:

• division of primary education into 'cognitive' and 'non-cognitive'
domains.

• vocabulary control and use of 'appropriate' language in formal and
informal situations.

• subdivision of language skills leading to a labourious exercise of
deciphering printed symbols for factual communication.

• acquisition of language competencies without any reference to mother
tongue at the primary stage.

The NPE (1986), DPEP, UNSCOPE, all make abundant references to the education
of the girl child, with increasing use of terms like empowerment and change. A
close look at the way in which these terms are used, however, reveals a trend
more likely to result in 'looking upon women as ready receptors of demographic
messages, literacy for the transmission of these and other messages from the
market, and proficient wage earners without control over their mode of
production, rather than of empowering them to transform their role in society as
equal partners.' (Report on Education of the National Consultation on CRC,
1994, p. 70)

The two externally aided programmes, DPEP and UNSCOPE are contrasted in Table
I against the vision statement of an indigenous effort for strengthening
elementary education, initiated in 1995, known as Lokshala.

To seek answers, we need to look into not the policies themselves, but to
related developments in the last 20 years in the areas of demographic control
and the process of liberalization of the Indian economy.

Since the failure of the draconian population control of the mid- seventies,
the focus of family planning has shifted almost exclusively from men to women.
That this is a regression in the process of equal responsibility of men and
women is carefully avoided in any governmental discourse. The large-scale
failure of the condom mode of contraceptive usage has been acknowledged by
policy documents since the mid-eighties, when the government was obliged to
explain how, if the contraceptive usage figures were true, could these figures
explain the high crude birth rates being recorded at the same time?

Family planning policies since 1990, have begun to state that education (read
literacy) of girls is the best 'contraceptive'. Kerala's high female literacy
figure and low birth rates are co-related directly without any reference to
Kerala's long history of socio-economic development and matrilinearity. This
female literacy-birth rate connection appears even more credible to population
policy makers when states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, infamously called BIMARU or 'ill' by facetious writers, have not only
low female literacy, but high birth rates. To those for whom being poor equals
being ill, it is not hard to believe, ability to read and write will mean having
less children. Thus, the case for substituting education with literacy is made.
That is why rising female literacy levels, not education, is the much-treasured
goal of policy makers. Is it a coincidence that the MLL competencies in
environmental science has developed verbal and pictorial messages of 'small
family, happy family', where the small family pictures depicts an affluent
setting and the large family, a deprived one?

India was perhaps the only third world nation to have forbidden by law,
injectible contraceptives such as Norplant, being much promoted by the west,
thanks to the vigilance of a small band of women activists and the judiciary on
the grounds that these devices have not been adequately tested and proven safe
for the life conditions of poor women. Population growth of the third world
countries is probably one of the most threatening aspects of the third world in
the eyes of the 'developed' nations, and it should not come as a surprise that a
major goal of all forms of aid is ultimately a decrease in population of the
third world. Aid to India is no exception.

The relationship between the need for literate citizens and liberalization of
economy and 'opening up' of markets is so obvious that those in the field of
education appear to have entirely missed the connection. Now the policy shifts
from elementary education to primary, from education to literacy, and, for those
within the formal school system, from the curriculum designed to think
critically to the curriculum designed to create receptors of messages, that the
MLL has become clear. Who needs education for developing the critical faculty
when multi-national markets have to function?

That these shifts affecting a nation of nearly 1 billion people have occurred
with very little resistance must also be seen in conjunction with the fact that
the external aid in the education sector is around 4.2% of the public
expenditure on elementary education. Such is the power of the post-Jomtien
phenomenon in Indian education.

References:

National Policy on Education, 1986, Government of India.

Rights of the Child - Report of a National Convention, 1994,
organized by Indian Council of Child Welfare and UNICEF.

Joint UN System Support for Community Based Primary Education, UNICEF,
UNDP, UNFPA, UNESCO, ILO, 1996.

Education for All, The Indian Scene, Ministry of Human Resource
Development, Government of India, 1993.

Jan Bharat Vigyan Jatha (a nation-wide network that
emerged as a historical outcome of a long-term indigenous process of
advocacy and field experiment and consultation with communities,
educationists and policy makers.)1995 Until training school years and its relationship with
the community.

Advocating re-prioritisation in favour of education
within Indian economy in consonance with Constitutional obligation ongoing
transformation process.

20.

Post project activities

21.

Curriculum Perspectives

Centralised formulation in terms of MLL

"

Community Based intervention in evolving geo-cultural
perspective as basis of curriculum.

22.

Role of work in Community

Avenue as in draft

Same

Local indigenous knowledge providing basis for
comprehending global knowledge viewing a UEE as a subset of socio-economic
processes with emphasis on changes outside the school domain programme
designed at changes within/outside the school domain for achieving.

23.

Management Structures

Ed. Cil etc. SAEMET in States

"

Locally evolved peoples advocacy pressure groups.

24.

CR Management & Stage

Multigrade as response to lack of teachers
& appropriate pupil to teacher ratios

"

Ensuring adequate number of teachers and appropriate
pupil its ratio management of classroom size perceived as a pedagogic
issue.

25.

Inservice training

Centrally designed modules not aimed at developing
teachers capacities for preparing their own curriculum.

"

Evolving diverse teacher-training programmes in
consonance with Geo-cultural settings with community participation.

26.

Language

No stated policy; restricted to state
language.

Beginning with mother-tongue as medium in the earlier
years with a pedagogic design for shifting to state space for other
languages as medium and appropriate languages.